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Thirty feet away, across the yard, Hodder saw the gleaming window from which the music came. He got to his feet. Another verse began, with more of the brazen emphasis of the concert-hall singer than ever. He glanced at the woman beside him, irresolutely. "I'll speak to her," he said. Mrs. Garvin did not appear to hear him, but flung herself down beside the lounge.
Her husband had committed suicide, her child had been on the point of death, and she says that she lies awake nights now thinking in terror of what might have happened to her if you and Mr. Bentley hadn't helped her. She's learning to be a stenographer. Do you remember her? her name is Garvin." "Did she say anything more?" Hodder anxiously demanded.
He drew a deep breath, and entered; at the sound of his step Mrs. Garvin suddenly started up. "Richard!" she cried, and then stood staring at the rector. "Have you seen my husband, sir? He went away soon after you left." Hodder, taken by surprise, replied that he had not. Her tone, her gesture of anxiety he found vaguely disquieting. "The doctor has been here?" he asked.
Suddenly, above the confused noises of the night, the loud notes of a piano broke, and the woman whose voice he had heard in the afternoon began once more with appalling vigour to sing. The child moaned. Mrs. Garvin started up hysterically. "I can't stand it I can't stand her singing that now," she sobbed.
Garvin into the first-class compartment, and it soon appeared that Messrs Garvin & Quorrall did, in fact, own the train, and that the London and North Western Railway was no more than their washpot. "Bring us a cushion from somewhere, will ye?" said Mr. Quorrall, casually, to a ticket-collector who entered. And the resplendent official obeyed.
It was evident that the financier intended him to open the battle, and he was as he had expected finding it difficult to marshal the regiments of his arguments. In vain he thought of the tragedy of Garvin . . . . The thing was more complicated.
Each week there appeared in the same place on the same page a portrait of the Kid, looking moody and important, in an attitude of self-defence, and under the portrait the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must meet this boy." Jimmy was the present holder of the light-weight title.
He even spoke of Garvin: adversity, worry, the heat, constant brooding over a happier past and an uncertain future was it surprising that the poor man's mind had become unhinged? They must make some plan for Garvin, said Mr. Bentley, get the man and his wife into the country for a while amongst kindly people. This might no doubt be arranged.... "Here we are, sir."
Her exclamation was caused by the sight of the tall figure and black coat of the rector, and as she left the room, Mrs. Garvin turned. And he noticed in her eyes the same expression of dread they had held when she had protested against his coming. "Please don't think that I'm not thankful " she faltered. "I am not offering you charity," he said.
As he seized his hat and left the room he had the idea of telephoning for a nurse, when he almost ran into some one in the upper hall, and recognized the stout German woman, Mrs. Breitmann. "Mrs. Garvin" he said, "she ought not to be left " "I am just now going," said Mrs. Breitmann. "I stay with her until her husband come."
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